Reliability and Service Keys to Success for RICOH Customers

RICOH hosted a panel Sunday morning of customer companies that represent a cross-section of the industry. Sterling, VA’s GAM Graphics and Marketing is a family-owned company that started in offset 40 years ago, but in the last three to four years has transitioned to 100% digital printing with a series of RICOH presses, starting with the C900. The company served as a beta site for the C7110, and liked it so much that it bought one. 

Nathaniel Grant, President of GAM, loved the five-color capabilities of the C7110. “We’ve been able to market the clear and the white [inks] and the substrates it’s able to run are unbelievable,” said Grant. He also cited the increasing quality of the machines. “We noticed over the seven- or eight-year period, as RICOH has come out with new products, they’ve enhanced them so much that our service calls have gone far down.”

MGX Copy is a four-year-old printing company based in San Diego that is 100% digital, 100% web-to-print, and has an average employee age of 26. In fact, 30% to 40% of the staff have a software engineering background. “No one knows how to run an offset press,” said Lawrence Chou, MGX Founder and CEO.

Chou said that his business model was based on that of Southwest Airlines. Specifically, he said, Southwest’s use of only one type of airplane, the Boeing 737. “When we wanted to build this company, we said, ‘We need a Boeing 737,’” said Chou. Or, that is, a fleet of them, so that all the operators and mechanics know how to work on the machines, solve problems, keep them running and, if one goes down, another one can be substituted as needed. The more he researched it, the more convinced he became that the RICOH C9110 was MGX Copy’s Boeing 737.

“The 9110 does 400 gsm, has an extremely straight paper path, the solids are beautiful, the gradients are beautiful, and it runs at exceptionally fast speed,”  Chou said. The company has four 9110s and runs an average of 750,000 12x18 clicks every month. MGX Copy has grown, Chou said, 580% over a three-year period, and has found that RICOH has been a valuable partner in helping the company scale up. “We watched RICOH go from trying to get into the production print marketplace to really understanding how to support it,” he added.

The third customer was the self-described “old-school litho guy,” Bob Dahlke, Jr., Principal of Chicago’s VisoGraphics. Founded in 1946, the Dahlke family has owned VisoGraphics since 1979 ,and until six or seven years ago was 0% digital. The company began its relationship with RICOH with the purchase of the C901 and, said Dahlke, “soon went beyond its duty cycle.” The company acquired a C9110, which was installed less than a month ago. Dahlke has already run 500,000 impressions on it.

A recent project for a major client involving 1.2 million pieces comprising 94 different versions needed to be split between an 8-color Heidelberg press and the C9110—which has been in for four days. He laid the offset print, the digital print, and an Epson proof side-by-side and, said Dahlke, “‘My customer said, ‘I can’t tell the difference. That is amazing.’” VisoGraphics is now 25% to 30% digital and growing. “We’re hitching our ride to RICOH,” said Dahlke.

“They are a partner, they listen, and they’re improving their products.”